Traders brought Central American cacao to Georgia 1,000 years ago
Traders brought Central American cacao to Georgia 1,000 years ago
1000年前，贸易商将中美洲的可可带到了佐治亚州
A thousand years ago, feasts in what’s now northern Georgia state included cacao from Central America. Potsherds discarded after an 11th-century feast at Etowah—an Indigenous city just north of what’s now Atlanta—contained traces of cacao, a raw ingredient of chocolate. The chemical residue and ancient DNA reveal that not only did the Mississippian people who built the city have excellent taste, they also had trade connections that reached at least 3,000 kilometers to Central America. And in a sense, chocolate may have helped build the Mississippian mounds.
一千年前，在如今佐治亚州北部举行的宴会上，人们已经开始享用来自中美洲的可可。在埃托瓦（Etowah，位于现今亚特兰大以北的一座原住民城市）的一场11世纪宴会后，人们丢弃的陶片中发现了可可的痕迹，而可可正是制作巧克力的原材料。化学残留物和古DNA表明，建造这座城市的密西西比文化原住民不仅品味高雅，而且拥有远达3000公里外中美洲的贸易往来。从某种意义上说，巧克力可能还助力了密西西比土墩的建造。
Ancient dirty dishes
古老的脏餐具
University of South Carolina archaeologist Adam King and his colleagues found fragments of ancient DNA from Theobroma cacao in the inner surfaces of potsherds from long-ago feasts at Etowah. Fruit from the cacao tree contains beans that, when dried and roasted, produce chocolate in all its glorious forms. Cacao only grows in the tropics, which means the nearest actual cacao trees would have been at least a 3,000-kilometer trek away from the woodlands of the eastern US. And that means the Mississippian people who lived in Etowah must have had continent-spanning trade connections.
南卡罗来纳大学的考古学家亚当·金（Adam King）及其同事在埃托瓦古宴会遗留的陶片内壁中，发现了可可树（Theobroma cacao）的古DNA片段。可可树的果实含有可可豆，经过干燥和烘焙后，便能制成各种美味的巧克力。可可只生长在热带地区，这意味着最近的可可树距离美国东部的林地至少有3000公里的路程。这也意味着居住在埃托瓦的密西西比人必然拥有跨越大陆的贸易联系。
Etowah was a major center of the Mississippian culture, which flourished in the southeastern US in the centuries before colonization. By 1350 CE, wooden palisades and guard towers ringed a trio of giant earthen mounds (and three smaller ones), the largest of which stood six stories high and covered three acres. Log temples atop the mounds overlooked wide plazas for ball games, ceremonies, and open-air markets. The feast that King and his colleagues studied dates to two centuries before Etowah’s heyday, during the building of the first big platform mound.
埃托瓦是密西西比文化的主要中心，该文化在殖民前的几个世纪里在美国东南部繁荣发展。到公元1350年，木制栅栏和瞭望塔环绕着三个巨大的土墩（以及三个较小的土墩），其中最大的土墩有六层楼高，占地三英亩。土墩顶部的原木神庙俯瞰着宽阔的广场，那里曾是举行球赛、仪式和露天市场的地方。金及其同事研究的宴会发生在埃托瓦鼎盛时期之前的两个世纪，正值第一座大型平台土墩建造期间。
After digging up a huge quantity of dirt for that mound, people filled in a pit with refuse from community feasts, including a lot of broken pottery, much to the delight of future archaeologists, who categorically love broken pottery. And because nobody washed the dishes before tossing them into the feasting pit, King and his colleagues (in a 2017 study) could analyze the microscopic residue of ancient drinks that had soaked into the ceramic.
在为该土墩挖掘了大量泥土后，人们用社区宴会的垃圾填平了一个坑，其中包括大量破碎的陶器——这让未来的考古学家们欣喜若狂，因为他们对破碎的陶器情有独钟。由于当时没有人清洗餐具就将其扔进宴会坑，金及其同事（在2017年的一项研究中）得以分析渗入陶器中的古老饮料的微量残留物。
Mass spectrometry revealed that the broken containers had once held something containing the chemical compounds theobromine, theophylline, caffeine, and paraxanthine. Those compounds are hallmarks of cacao, but they’re also found in yaupon holly, which grows all over the eastern US. Indigenous people in the region have used yaupon holly in tea since well before the rise of Etowah. Based on the biomarkers, there was no real reason to look for imported cacao instead of local yaupon tea. But King and his colleagues decided to anyway, and they found cacao DNA.
质谱分析显示，这些破碎的容器曾盛装过含有可可碱、茶碱、咖啡因和副黄嘌呤等化学成分的物质。这些化合物是可可的标志，但也存在于美国东部随处可见的“雅蓬冬青”（yaupon holly）中。该地区的原住民在埃托瓦兴起之前很久就开始用雅蓬冬青泡茶了。从生物标志物来看，并没有充分的理由去寻找进口可可，而不是使用当地的雅蓬茶。但金及其同事还是决定进行检测，最终他们发现了可可的DNA。
It’s the first evidence that Etowah, and the Mississippian culture, had trade connections stretching all the way to the Maya world. That’s revelatory enough, but since the potsherds date to the construction of Etowah’s first platform mound, the results mean that Etowah had long-range trade networks even in its early days.
这是埃托瓦乃至密西西比文化与玛雅世界存在贸易联系的首个证据。这一发现本身就足以令人震惊，而且由于这些陶片的年代可以追溯到埃托瓦第一座平台土墩的建造时期，研究结果意味着埃托瓦在早期阶段就已经拥有了远程贸易网络。
Chaco Canyon connection?
与查科峡谷的联系？
At around the same time people at Etowah were feasting on cacao, so were people at Chaco Canyon in what’s now New Mexico. Chaco Canyon was the cultural and economic heart of a roughly 60,000-square-kilometer area that, up until the mid-1100s CE, was a much greener American Southwest. The area around Chaco Canyon may have been home to around 100,000 people at its height, and the site itself is home to multi-story stone buildings with hundreds of rooms each. And the Ancestral Pueblo people who lived there from 900 to 1150 CE used their trade connections with Mexico and Central America to import everything from scarlet macaws to cacao.
在埃托瓦人享用可可的同时，现今新墨西哥州的查科峡谷（Chaco Canyon）的人们也在享用可可。查科峡谷是一个约6万平方公里区域的文化和经济中心，直到公元1100年代中期，那里还是美国西南部一片绿意盎然的土地。在鼎盛时期，查科峡谷周边地区可能居住着约10万人，该遗址本身拥有多层石建筑，每座建筑都有数百个房间。公元900年至1150年间居住在那里的普韦布洛祖先（Ancestral Pueblo）利用他们与墨西哥和中美洲的贸易联系，进口了从绯红金刚鹦鹉到可可等各种商品。
That’s a crucial difference between Chaco Canyon and Etowah: At Chaco Canyon, there’s lots of evidence of trade with Central America, but at Etowah, so far there’s only the cacao residue in the potsherds. So it’s unclear whether Etowah got other exotic trade goods from Central America or from the Southwest, or what goods the woodland mound city offered its trading partners in return. It’s also hard to say whether cacao and other trade goods reached Chaco Canyon and Etowah after long trading expeditions, or by passing through a series of hand-to-hand exchanges along the way.
这是查科峡谷和埃托瓦之间的一个关键区别：在查科峡谷，有大量与中美洲贸易的证据，但在埃托瓦，目前只有陶片中的可可残留物。因此，尚不清楚埃托瓦是否从中美洲或西南部获得了其他外来贸易商品，也不清楚这座林地土墩城市向贸易伙伴提供了什么作为交换。同样难以确定的是，可可和其他贸易商品是通过长途贸易探险到达查科峡谷和埃托瓦的，还是通过沿途一系列的转手交换到达的。
So far, we know that Chaco Canyon had its own trading network reaching through Mexico and south into Central America. What we don’t know is whether Etowah got its cacao through a network traveling north through Mexico, or if its Central American connection actually ran through Chaco Canyon—or both. “These results ask us to look more closely for evidence of links connecting the Mississippian world to the Hohokam and Ancestral Pueblo of the Southwest,” wrote King and his colleagues.
目前我们知道，查科峡谷拥有自己的贸易网络，延伸至墨西哥并向南进入中美洲。我们尚不清楚埃托瓦是通过穿过墨西哥向北的贸易网络获得可可的，还是其与中美洲的联系实际上是通过查科峡谷实现的，亦或是两者兼有。“这些结果要求我们更仔细地寻找连接密西西比世界与西南部霍霍卡姆（Hohokam）及普韦布洛祖先文化的联系证据，”金及其同事写道。
Meanwhile, between 800 and 1600 CE, southwestern cultures like the Ancestral Pueblo had connections with the Caddoan cultures who lived west of Etowah, in what’s now Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. Their archaeological sites contain turquoise, southwestern-style pottery, and obsidian from hundreds of kilometers to the west. All of these networks connecting far-flung Indigenous civilizations would have “moved things, people, and ideas,” as King and his colleagues put it. It’s very tempting—and very plausible—to envision a complex web of traditional relationships spanning much of the continent in the millennium before European colonial powers arrived to wreck it all.
与此同时，在公元800年至1600年间，像普韦布洛祖先这样的西南部文化与居住在埃托瓦以西（现今阿肯色州、路易斯安那州、俄克拉荷马州和德克萨斯州）的卡多安（Caddoan）文化之间存在联系。他们的考古遗址中发现了绿松石、西南部风格的陶器以及来自数百公里外的黑曜石。正如金及其同事所言，所有这些连接遥远原住民文明的网络都曾“促进了物品、人员和思想的流动”。在欧洲殖民势力到来并摧毁这一切之前的千年里，设想一个横跨大陆大部分地区的复杂传统关系网，既令人神往，又非常合理。